Tuesday, April 28, 2015

"Two scholars argue that historians of philosophy should acknowledge the influence of long-neglected female voices." according to Nick Anderson, Reporter — Washington, D.C.

Generations
of college students know philosophy as a subject dominated by the
writings of men, from ancient Greece onward. The stereotypical figure in
its history: Sage with beard.

In recent decades,
scholars of English literature and other fields have pushed to broaden
their curriculum through the inclusion of previously neglected works of
women.

Here, two professors from Duke and Columbia
universities argue that it’s time for philosophy to reckon with its own
gender problem.

Portrait of Emilie Du Chatelet (1706-1749), a
philosopher of the French Englightenment. Oil on canvas attributed to
Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788). Photo: Washington Post

By Andrew Janiak and Christia Mercer“Blessed
are you, reader, if you do not belong to the sex of those who are
deprived” a proper education “so that ignorance, slavery, and the
capacity to play the fool are established as woman’s only happiness.” So
wrote the philosopher Marie de Gournay in the early 17th century.If
you, reader, have never heard of de Gournay or the early modern debate
about virtue, reason, and education, you are not alone. You have been
deprived a proper education and played the fool by historians of
philosophy.This spring, W.W. Norton & Co. published “The Norton Introduction to Philosophy,”
a 1,168-page textbook, edited by prominent philosophers from Princeton
University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere.
Beginning with Plato’s “Meno” and Aristotle’s “Politics,” passing
through medieval and early modern treatises to contemporary debates,
this textbook provides excerpts and commentary on 2,400 years of
canonical texts, organized around central philosophical problems. It is
philosophically astute, thoughtfully laid out — and contains no writings
by women before the mid-20th century.[Also from Mercer: I teach philosophy at Columbia. But some of my best students are inmates.]The Norton Introduction is not exceptional. Hackett’s recent “Modern Philosophy” (2009) includes “leading thinkers of the period” but not a single woman. And Anthony Kenny’s “A New History of Western Philosophy”
(2012), deemed “wonderfully authoritative” by the Times Higher
Education Supplement, includes only great men in its grandiose “new”
account.Most readers will respond to the absence of women in these histories as
an unfortunate result of centuries of educational deprivation. As de
Gournay poignantly notes, women “achieve levels of excellence” less
often than men because of their “lack of good education.” Although a
handful of women attended ancient academies, they could only rarely
enroll in European universities, participate in scientific societies, or
teach in churches, temples or mosques. Most consumers of contemporary
philosophy textbooks will begrudgingly accept the absence of women in
philosophy prior to the 20th century. But they would be dead wrong to do
so.

In May 1643, the great French mathematician and philosopher René
Descartes began to correspond with a European princess, Elisabeth of
Bohemia. Like so many women writing in the early modern period, the
princess begins their exchange with excuses for bothering the famous
author. Describing herself as “an ignorant and intractable person” with a
“disordered style,” Elisabeth expresses her interest in the great man’s
views about mind and body.

After a few pleasantries, she pivots to a devastating criticism of his
proposals, from which he does not fully recover. Elisabeth’s insightful
comments over the course of their six-year exchange influenced
Descartes’ developing views about the soul. Given that there is a fine edition and translation of their correspondence
and that the history of the mind-body problem is incomplete without her
criticisms, it seems inexcusable to exclude Elisabeth from the history
of philosophy.Read more...

Additional resourcesAndrew Janiak is Creed C. Black Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Duke University and co-leader of Project Vox. Christia Mercer is
Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. They
are co-editors, with Professor Eileen O’Neill at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, of the “Oxford New Histories of Philosophy.”Source: Washington Post

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Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.